Garden Furniture & Outdoor Living Questions
In this section of our site we will try and answer all of your questions on garden furniture and outdoor living items for your outside living space. If you have any that you particually need answered please feel free to email us with a query and we will put up a solution to help resolve any gardening problems you may have or wish to discuss.
What Are the Main Requirements to Install a Water Feature in My Garden?
Whatever style of water feature you choose the basic requirement, whether moving or still, is that there must be a reliable easy to access source of clean water, either natural or mains. Also you will need a container that will hold sufficient water for the intended purpose without leaking. This could be a pool liner, concrete, fibre glass or bentonite; just so long as it suits your garden and does a proper job. Ultimatelyit is down to your budget but certainly something like a gentle trickle of water emerging from an old clay pipe can easily be turned into a resplendent feature that takes your breath away.
Can You Recommend Dense Foliage Plants With Pretty Winter Flowers For Ground Cover at the Base of a Statue?
Of all the flowers of winter to plant at the base of a garden statue Iris Unguicularis must be one of the best. It is so heartening to fall across its brave little flowers on a cold, dank winter’s day. Just when its grassy tuffs of foliage look dull and uninspiring, through the browning leaves thrust little batches of exquisite richly coloured lilac-lavender flowers. When picked in bud and taken indoors, encouraged by the heat of a fire these delicate blooms will soon pop open and fill a room with their delicious scent. To get the best from Iris Unguicularis you need to plant it against a hot sunny wall in poor dry soil and then just leave it alone unless you want to split it, when it gets larger, to make more plants. The oldest variety and most famous is ‘Walter Butt’ which is very free-flowering with pale lilac flowers. There is also the rarer dark purple‘Mary Banard’ and a white strain know as ‘Bowles White’.
Will Free Range Chickens Damage My Garden Furniture?
There is no doubt that home produced eggs taste so much better than supermarket eggs and chickens can look quaint in a garden, as well as being amusing to watch, but they can inflict damage on a garden. This is because their natural instinct is to scratch and look for insects so they are quite likely to disturb border plants and uproot seedlings; they will also peck off young shoots to form part of their diet. However unless the hop up onto your garden furniture they are unlikely to spoil it. You can stop them going onto something like a wooden bench by clipping the flight feathers off one wing, so they can't fly properly. However if you want to preserve your garden why not keep them in a movable chicken arc? This means they can have a fresh area every two or three days or so and are less likely to turn the ground sour.
Where is the Best Place to Put a Summerhouse in a Garden?
Because of its generally solid appearance a summerhouse needs to be positioned carefully particularly where space is at a premium, so that it does not dominate the whole garden. Ideally it should be sited to make the best use of available sunlight, and it should be linked to the rest of the garden and house by suitable paths or paving, giving easy and reasonably direct access.
How To Stop Clay Pots Cracking in Cold Weather?
Garden pots often crack in freezing conditions because any moisture in the soil expands when frozen and puts pressure on the pot. So if you make a point of placing lots of small random pieces of polystyrene at the bottom of clay or stone containers before you put in compost or soil it will allow for any expansion without causing cracks or splits.
Where Can I Rent a Christmas Tree For My Patio?
Real Trees in Dorset hire out living potted Christmas trees for the festive season. They will deliver in in time for the holiday period and then take it away to be replanted ready for next year. If you wanted to make a feature of your patio for Christmas then you could hire several and place them around something like a large outdoor metal dining table and chairs which is decorated with evergreen and holly. On still nights the table could be lit with a mass of candles which you could also have round the base of each tree; in addition these can be elegantly decorated. www.treesforrent.com
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